3/30/11

With the Moorish architecture of Granada's Alhambra and Córdoba cathedral as a backdrop, Marcel Theroux meets a group of Spanish Muslims who are drawing on the area's Islamic legacy to a promote a new religious tolerance.

3/25/11

Explore an astonishing cargo of some 60,000 objects carried by a ninth-century Arab dhow, ranging from exquisite ceramics to rare items of finely worked gold. Lying undisturbed on the ocean floor for more than 1,100 years until its discovery near Indonesia's Belitung Island in 1998, it is one of the oldest and most important marine archaeological finds of the late 20th century. The find confirms for the first time the existence of a direct maritime trade route from China to the Persian Gulf and beyond.

For more than a decade, archaeologists and historians have been studying the contents of a ninth-century Arab dhow that was discovered in 1998 off Indonesia’s Belitung Island. The sea-cucumber divers who found the wreck had no idea it eventually would be considered one of the most important maritime discoveries of the late 20th century.

The Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA) is a resource to trace, share, and enable community enrichment of the modern art heritage of Iraq. Explore the works by artist, browse through related textual materials, or add your own images or stories to the archive.

3/21/11

The Virtual Museum of Iraq is a scientific and cultural initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and realized by the Italian National Research Council. The purpose of the project is to provide the public with the opportunity, through a web site, of coming into contact with the archeological, historical and artistic heritage of one of the most important museum institutions in the world, the National Museum of Iraq, in Baghdad.

As Ms. Haidar recalled recently, back in the much less cinematic confines of a museum construction site: “It was a very powerful moment. It made up our minds because we could see how close he was to the tradition. And we wanted to see that hand on our walls.”

She and her colleagues had gone to Morocco in search of help for a kind of project that the Metropolitan, which generally concerns itself with the work of dead artists, has rarely undertaken in its 140 years: to install a group of living artists inside the museum for the purposes of creating a permanent new part of its collection.